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Intermountain Health transforms HR analytics with Tableau

There is so much data within human resources. Tableau allows you to slice the data in a lot of different ways, but also drill down to something that is specific and meaningful for a leader to actually take and apply.

Michael Thurston,HR Analyst

Tableau: What is the benefit of introducing analytics into human resources—or “HR” as we typically call it?Michael Thurston, HR Analyst, Intermountain Healthcare: HR has traditionally been seen as a cost center to the organization. It's a money pit. We throw money in there just because we have to. It's a necessary evil.

Being able to have a strong HR analytics function within an organization allows you to not only show that HR is not just a cost center, but they can actually improve the bottom line and add value in ways that you didn't think was possible.

Tableau: Sometimes people think of HR as being a “soft skills” department and not so data-driven. How can analytics be applied to the HR function of a company?Michael: HR analytics can be used in an HR department in so many ways because there is so much data within human resources.

We can take all of these little pieces of data and use them to build a business case for our HR initiatives. If we are able to show that by having a Christmas bonus every year increases employee engagement and reduces turnover—that's great, but how much does that bring to the bottom line? That is the problem that HR has always been struggling with.

We’re able to bunch all of that data together within Tableau and break it down into small pieces so that we're actually able to analyze it and say, ‘This person applied after this person (but) this person received an interview before this person. Why?’ And is there something that we need to be doing in our recruiting process to ensure that we're receiving the best candidates?

Tableau: And you can use Tableau to help with that?Michael: Tableau allows us to not only break that up, but for HR leaders, the recruitment leaders, they're able to look at the whole scale of recruitment. And then they're able to pinpoint, okay, I want to know about this specific recruiter and how they're doing and how effective they are.

Tableau allows you to slice the data in a lot of different ways, but also drill down to something that is specific and meaningful for that -- that leader to actually take and apply to somebody.